A Bitter Sweet Age
by On either side the river lie
Summary: On the cusp of manhood, Lady Mary laments how her son has grown. A one-shot from a prompt on Tumblr


From a prompt on Tumblr from lala-kate : _how fast a child grows from a mother's perspective—Mary observing George_

-this is where it took me….and remember, Lady Mary and George are guests to my party, they are and always will be people of Downton/JF & ITV

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Her eyes found him swathed in the throng of colourful people. She always found him easily, just as she had his father. It wasn't a matter of obsessively needing to know where he was at all times, although, she almost chuckled out loud, she had been overwhelmed by that sensation too often when he was small. How time had a way of playing tricks, and banking up memories. Had it really been years since she smelt his newness and felt the softness of hope that covered him like baby's down?

Mary lifted the glass to her lips and let the tart heat of alcohol swell around the memories that burned like diamonds under her skin.

George, so very much like his father felt the pull of her gaze, like the tugging of a thread inexplicably tied under his ribs, and turned in his mother's direction. He found her across the Grand Hall, next to, but not engaging in the circle of people that liked to find themselves in her company. Her smile held comfort, and the unabashed love that radiated from every exposed pore that she could hardly keep within.

Her armour lay piled at her feet in her son's omnipresence. He, and he alone had known her in her truths. The rawness to which she had finally allowed him into her heart, had both split her asunder, and healed her enough to grasp back at life again.

Her jovial and excitable child had trained her to live in mere moments, and to stay paused in the details of joy in the here and now. For it was those memories that warmed her in the dark of deep night when she could not stop the vault cracking open and drawing all her breath from her heaving chest.

But he had taught her to laugh again. And she had lived solely for him in the beginning.

Her darling George, perched on the cusp of manhood. About to embark on a path dictated by a different duty and unimaginable hardships. This was when he needed Matthew. When she needed Matthew.

The slight shake of her head must have caught George's attention, and his eyebrow rose in question as his body openly turned to find an answer.

She knew he understood when she tried to brush it off, but was secretly glad when he excused himself from the crowd and made his way across the hall.

The lights paled in comparison, and the cracking of the fire soothed her torment. The glass felt significant somehow, so she raised it in salute as he neared and met his bight sky filled eyes across the brim.

"Happy birthday to the towering man I call son." The crooked kink of her smile held her laughter in check, the pride she felt though oozed over her words.

He paused, wanting to brush off the artificial frivolity that coated the party. Perceptive as always he saw her internal struggle, the darkness of her eyes flecked with gold looked at him with honesty and rawness. And he understood, more than he usually let on to most how much he read her. This woman of steel and determination, of compassion and empathy, of duty and of love. The only pivotal person in his life that he had truly needed and wanted. He had no knowledge of wanting anything different, even though he knew that his friends had been granted a different life.

The stillness as he stood next to her was familiar, from the last eighteen years, and the previous nine. His movements echoed another, pulled from the ether to settle in her son's bones. His unruly light brown hair grew from the evidence of a shared love, waving at her in tease. Soon to be clipped in uniform, she realised. The set of shoulders held squarely a balance of expected responsibility and moral rightness. The soft pads of his large hands, ones knowing only work of pens and paper and leather reins, held the glass with an ease of conscious and youthful confidence.

"You must never forget mama," George halted again, focusing his pale eyes of an old soul fixedly on her own, quietly recanting "I will always be your little chap."

The love and the shared memory exploded her internal workings, and with no mask to hide behind she could not halt the flush that instantly flooded her cheeks, so she looked down to compose herself.

George leaned in and brushed an unexpected kiss to her temple, aware how he had affected her. She leaned in fractionally to make pressure to his touch, so rare in such a public gathering. It was all the time she needed to right her bearing, and her son watched as she had often did, unfurl before him to stand as only the Lady Mary could.

As her breath restored her, he assaulted her with his father's mischievous grin determined to lighten the mood.

"Now come mama, we must save Freja from the clutches of Granny Izzy. I had no idea quite how zealous she was?"

That made Mary laugh, quite openly so that some of their guests looked towards them. Care though she would not. Tonight she wanted to celebrate as much as they would allow themselves this one last time.

"I'm afraid war has that effect on her. And besides George, I am getting to know that Freja is almost always able to hold her own."

Her hand patted his arm reassuringly.

"She reminds me of you, you know." And the way Mary cocked her head and gently glanced at him, made him realise that she had seen it too. "Will you look after her then…when I'm away?"

"Like she was one of my own." Her rushed reply reassured him it was the truth. And it warmed him that he need not have worried.

"Now come you overgrown buffoon, there needs to be dancing. I'm quite good you know!"

With fingers and arms entwined, just as when he was young and not that long ago, they walked towards Isobel and his sweetheart, the eyes around the room followed them as the music of laughter bounced around the walls of the abbey at the old running joke.


End file.
